Sugar and Spice Part 1
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: Everyone is having anxiety attacks over the fact that Angel has just handed over a human baby to the Fell Brethren like a sack of spuds on supermarket sale, Illyria is still being inexplicably tetchy and moody, and what Lindsey McDonald is up to is anyone's guess. Follows Shadowed Souls as the penultimate story in the series. Multi-part story set just before the episode Power Play
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer:**__ This story is "fan-fiction", based on the Television programme: Angel which remains the intellectual property of creators/producers Joss Whedon, Fran Rubel Kuzui et al and the former WB/UPN TV networks. It is not owned by "The Cat's Whiskers"; no money is being made, and it is purely for the enjoyment of fans of the show, etc., etc. Legal counsel has advised that "fan-fiction" falls within the bounds of "fair use" as defined by UK law (1740) and US law (1976). All 'Original characters, plots and story-settings' remain the property of 'The Cat's Whiskers' and may not be reproduced or continued without her express permission to reproduce, continue or expand same. _

**_Summary:_** _This is the penultimate story in _**_The Blood Will Tell _**_series. Everyone is having anxiety attacks over the fact that Angel has just handed over a human baby to the demonic Fell Brethren like a sack of spuds on supermarket sale, Illyria is still being inexplicably tetchy and moody, and what Lindsey McDonald is up to is anyone's guess… _

_**Rating:**_ _for site purposes only: T+. (I do not believe that written works should be age-rated; it is a foolish form of censorship that discourages and de-incentivises reading at all, for both knowledge and pleasure which is disastrous for the hope of producing the next generation of Keats, Milton, Twain, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, C.S. Lewis, Joss Whedon, Eric Kripke, Kyle Killen, and so on.) The above rating conforms to ' ' requirements to rate all stories. This story contains mildly intemperate language entirely in context by very stressed people and sundry mild references to sex, violence, drugs and rock 'n' roll, all of which can be seen and heard on daytime soaps (how's that for pre-watershed) by anyone from toddler age upwards. WARNING: this story does contain a reference to the vileness that is paedophilia that some readers may find distressing. _

**_Setting:_** _You will notice that I have elongated the "gap" between events as they occur in the episodes somewhat (imagine Season 5/this series covers more or less full twelve months in all). However, _**_Sugar & Spice_**_ begins within a week of the end of my story _**_Shadowed Souls_**_ and takes place just before the events of the televised episode _**_Power Play_**_._

**_Note: _**_Since apologies for the delay in posting this story. All hail Mendenbar for her encouragement and gentle reminder to get my proverbial in gear. _

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 1**

**Chapter 1**

_Whee-whee-whee-CLATTER!_

With a strangled yelp of fury, Harmony threw back the bedcovers with unconscious vampire strength, so they flew off the bed like something out of _Harry Potter_ and hit the wall with a _thwack_ before sliding to the floor. Harmony didn't notice as she practically catapulted from the mattress to the old sash-style window, shoving the lower half up the old-fashioned wooden slides one handed as with the other hand she grabbed the remaining boot from her pair of galoshes and threw it with vengeful accuracy at the tabby alley cat and the large black tomcat mating with her, whose duet of enthusiastic caterwauling echoed into the night.

Slamming down the window again, Harmony stomped back to bed grabbing the covers en route and heaving them back over her. It was not that she objected to any creature doing what came naturally, but it was now heading for half-past-three in the _morning_ and four previous tomcats had had their way with the tabby since eleven o'clock. Harmony closed her eyes and drew in deep breaths. The problem was, of course, this was so _unnatural_. While not sleeping in the same way as humans – at best, vampires 'napped' and neither did nor could achieve REM sleep – vampires did rest.

_In the day_. Vampires were a _nocturnal_ species by virtue of the fact that Earth's sun were fatal as in 'instantly flash-fried to ash'; vampires could only move around in daylight freely if they had a sewer or cave network they could traverse from A to B. At Wolfram & Hart however, that wasn't a problem. Necrotempered glass in the building, the cars, the company jets, etc., enabled those vampires employed by the company to move around with relative freedom during the day, but this also meant that because the majority of the company worked in the day and slept at night, the vampire employees of necessity did the same.

Harmony's internal time sense therefore, was currently wide-awake and chirpy, but she knew from experience that if she didn't get at least some rest, it would suddenly switch itself over to 'I'm going to fall asleep at my desk' round about mid-morning and you could just _guarantee_ that Angel-boss would pick just _then_ to storm out of his office – in what seemed to be his perpetual bad mood these days – and find Harmony face-down in her keyboard snoring for America.

Resolutely keeping her eyes closed Harmony composed herself for sleep with the fleeting thought that at least probably nobody else in Team Angel was in any better situation…

_Continued in Chapter 2…_

© 2008 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer, Summary, Rating,**__**Setting**_please see Part I, Chapter 1.

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 1**

**Chapter 2**

Coming down from the orgasmic euphoria, Nina's now-sensitive nostrils flared as she smelled the faint tang of blood coming from Angel's back and realised that her nails had scraped his skin unintentionally during climax.

"Oh…sorry…" She craned her head slightly to see over Angel's shoulder, slightly less embarrassed when she saw they were indeed only faint abrasions rather than true furrows – though the large bird tattoo now looked as if it were holding a faintly pink worm in its beak.

Angel raised a hand and gently tucked her hair behind one ear, smiling softly, "I think I can bear up under these kinds of injuries…"

Nina lay back down, her embarrassment at causing the scratches transmuting instead into a sort of flustered sense of _achievement_ at causing the scratches. If anyone had told her turning into a raging rabid lupine every full moon would have _advantages_ she'd probably have ruptured something laughing, but there had been subtle changes.

Her nails, which had always been stubby and rather brittle, were now elegant and polished without her having to lay out dead presidents she could ill afford at a manicurist's. Likewise her hair, previously fine but wispy and prone to dryness was now a strong, luxuriant mane, and her skin had likewise improved. It was oilier making her aware of watching out for acne, but that same oil rich skin was now softer and her periodic bouts of eczema had vanished.

Even her menstrual cycle wasn't a problem anymore, since instead of menstruating, she came 'into season' for the period of her transformation; one day soon she was going to sit down and work out just how many hundreds of dollars she must have saved on the hair, skin, nail and sanitary products she used to scour the shelves for – and always fell for – that invariably promised to transform 'you of the stubby nails, dry skin and mousy hair' into a 'sultry, silk-skinned sex-siren'… lycanthropy would have been the ultimate _win-win_ life changer for women if the triple-red-underlined doozy listed in the CON column hadn't _literally_ been 'man-eater' – or more accurately slavering savage anyone-eater.

"You sure you don't want to go on the jet…?" Angel asked her softly as he trailed one finger slowly down her arm.

She smiled and snuggled closer…Angel, the Vampire-with-a-Soul, Angel…the Natural Born Worrier. "I'll be fine…"

Angel didn't look convinced, but then he hadn't been from the get go. When Buffy Summers and the Scooby Gang had departed for Sunnydale after the disposal of that loathsome Rutherford Sirk and his Oligarchs, Nina had taken the Slayer-Queen's advice to heart and placed an international call to the monks who had helped Daniel "Oz" Osborne control his werewolf transformations.

Having helped many such unfortunate humans who, through no fault of their own, found themselves in such situations, they had immediately extended an invitation that Nina had accepted. She had noted how Angel had greeted the news of her trip with a curious mixture of worry but also relief, as if he wanted her safely out of the way for some reason…?

Now he was saying, "…- da taking it?"

Fortunately the final 'da' gave Nina sufficient clue as to the question he'd just asked. "Actually they're both fine. Though I will admit – Sebastian is a veritable _godsend_. Gill's so wrapped up in him that she doesn't have time to obsess over me any more, which is why I really, really hope it works out…" she quirked an eyebrow at him thoughtfully, "Any way in which you could _guarantee_ that, by any chance?"

"Uh-uh." Angel negated firmly. "So-called 'Love Potions' are a suckers' game. Most are used to fleece tourists, and those that do actually work have some _very_ nasty side effects. You _don't_ go messing with the most powerful force in the universe unless you have a very, very, _very_ good reason…or absolutely no other choice."

Nina smiled at his vehemence but subsided, ruefully abandoning the idea of using magic to ensure the perfect romantic outcome for the lovebirds. She'd always 'got' why Gill was so invested in her life rather than Gill's own, because she'd explained it to a series of exasperated-at-the-busybody previous college mates, friends and boyfriends often enough: Older by several years, Gill's big-sister over-protectiveness kick-started when her little sister Nina was born with cleft palate, a minor but unsightly facial deformity. It was stoked up when only eighteen months after their dad died, mom remarried a stepfather who expressed his own insecurities over their late dad's widely respected reputation as Father Nathanial Ash of St. Michael's Church and Children's Home by belittling his 'imperfect' younger step-daughter without admonition by mom who rapidly had four new children distracting her focus.

Mom's death from a heart attack barely two weeks past her 49th birthday – and just a month after her own 14th birthday - due to a never-diagnosed congenital abnormality had been a huge shock, compounded by the less than sympathetic attitude of the hospital administrator tactlessly expressing astonishment that mom had managed to have six children without keeling over like a poleaxed bull at a rodeo. Admittedly she and Gill were never going to be more than cordial to their stepdad, but prior to that tragedy they had been making tentative steps towards some accord, especially as it was clear he did genuinely love mom.

Gill, understandably but regrettably, had lashed out about his not keeping it in his pants and putting mom under the strain of four pregnancies, which had only ramped up _his _irrational sense of guilt and traumatised their half-brothers and sisters caught in their dad/Gill crossfire who took away the belief they had 'killed mom'. Of course that hadn't been the case – mom and dad had been married five years when they had Gill and then herself two years later, both planned children – mom had been an intelligent, sensible adult and since contraception was not that difficult or complicated if you did it properly, none of her pregnancies had been accidental or a mistake.

But at the time, it had felt like – and Gill had treated it like – plain and cruel abandonment, but in retrospect she could understand _why _their angry, grieving step-father's response - within a week of his wife's death and even before the funeral - had been to arrange the house's sale so as to relocate 'his' family – their two younger half-brothers and two half-sisters – to Orlando with clearly no intention of taking Nina with him, leaving twenty-two year old Gillian to take care of a devastated teenage girl who had lost her mother, siblings and home in rapid succession.

Taking in her orphaned and abandoned sister, but still in shock from mom's sudden death from that completely unsuspected heart defect, Gillian's mother hen streak had expanded even further. The decision to deliberately move into a college dorm to break the unhealthy dependency had been a no-brainer because it wasn't difficult to recognise the signs and the dangers of Gill's increasing tendencies towards becoming a workaholic while living vicariously through her.

And the gambit _seemed_ to have paid off – it sounded mean even now when she said it inside her own head, but when Gill had met Rowland Bayliss at a conference and by the end of the year she had been a bridesmaid as Gillian Ash became Gillian Bayliss, her primary emotion had been one of relief that Gill's micromanagement tendencies had been diverted - especially when fourteen months later Gill and Roly had celebrated Amanda's birth.

College had been the ultimate opportunity to enjoy personal space after a teenage life coping with an officious, overinvested sister…But one who had made great sacrifices for 'your' sake, which really ratcheted up the guilt she'd felt over just _how_ relieved she'd been to move into that college dorm – she didn't need any great psychology training to realise how significant it was that she was the only girl on the dorm who had _never_ experienced even a moment's homesickness.

Would things have turned out differently if Gill and Roly's crumbling marriage had not finally collapsed at just the same time she'd found herself temporarily homeless? It hadn't been her landlady's fault for needing to move back into the property she had been renting out following the destruction of her home in the last big tremor, and the silver lining was that her 'temporary' move back to Gill's would provide support and look after Amanda so Gill didn't need to give up work after Roly moved out.

She had never intended the arrangement to last longer than about six to eight weeks at the most. And at the time she'd had hopes of facilitating a reconciliation; Gill and Roly's marriage strains had been aggravated by money worries and fears of an economic downturn rather than by personal conflict or by each party pulling in different life directions, and besides, knowing Gill she was in no doubt her sister was equally as to blame for any stubbornness and arguments that had gone off.

But then with excruciating timing, Roly had earned the promotion opportunity of a lifetime in Finland, and had promptly taken it because Gill had started to play 'games' with visitation rights and his angry answer phone message had declared he saw no point staying in the US when he clearly wasn't going to get to see his only reason for staying – his daughter - thanks to her selfish, cruel mother and a US Family Court system clearly bigoted against men.

Unfortunately Amanda had been the one to hit the 'play messages' button and got an earful of her dad's rant– admittedly quite justified, as Gill had been entirely at fault for starting the 'alienating the children from their father' mind games. Moving out had become impossible as she acted as the go-between to reconcile defensive, distraught mom who made the crucial mistake of blaming dad for that phone call with enraged, distraught daughter who blamed mom for dad _emigrating _for goodness sake, and somehow it was one of those things that just never got back its original momentum.

Unfortunately that had led to now, and she had really been in the soup; when she'd been bitten by that werewolf that Angel stopped from killing her, it had been unthinkable to upset Gill by suddenly moving out, even though the truth was she had grown increasingly resentful of the way Gill was more and more acting as if she were as much her daughter, and therefore under her authority, as Amanda, instead of her sister and therefore with personal autonomy, thank you very much.

She found herself turning mushy as Angel's brown eyes remained filled with worry…for her. He was so _adorable_ when his face went all anxious…still she could see his point. Hiding her new condition from her sister and niece, and ensuring she was safely locked away at Wolfram & Hart so she couldn't tear anything she got hold of to pieces – like puppet Angel - had required precise timing and more legerdemain than she had ever dreamed herself capable of, and Gill had become more and more forcefully insistent about 'meeting Angel' and wanting details of her whereabouts in an inappropriate _'I think I'm the boss of you'_ rather than a _'I'm your sister who is concerned for your welfare'_ kind of way.

The blunt truth was that she had reached that point of feeling she was being boxed in the corner where she would have to a) tell Gill a few hard home truths about her behaviour towards her _adult_ sister over the past years, or b) confess to Gill that her sister was a werewolf with a vampire lover. Neither option was acceptable.

And then it stopped – the interrogations, the suspicious questioning, the badgering her about her movements and her boyfriend. The reason was one thing: _Sebastian_. A glorious name for a glorious man! Sebastian Argyle – as in Scotland, which indeed was where his great-great-grandparents had immigrated to the USA from - was a widower with a twenty-month-old daughter, whose wife had died in an auto wreck when their infant was barely four weeks old. Tall, slender and engaging, he was a UCLA professor who hit it off with Gill when she came to help as she saw him struggling to get baby Lauren and the grocery shop in his car.

On the cusp of adolescence, Amanda was also now old enough to be enchanted by the idea of a baby sister, instead of being so young she only saw the toddler as a threat – as had been her unfortunate reaction some years before when, probably inevitably, Roly Bayliss had found love in the Arctic circle and remarried a blonde Nordic goddess straight out of Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_ and had what even Gill freely admitted were 'adorable identical twin sons' with his second wife. Gill and Sebastian's relationship had been progressing in leaps and bounds, and she was silently rooting with every fibre of her being for Gillian Ash Bayliss to become Mrs Gillian Argyle by the end of the semester.

"So Gill has no problem with you taking off to the East for a couple of months?" Angel persisted, again with that curious mixture of reluctance and relief in his tone.

"Nope," she assured him with relief. "This time last year there would have been an almighty scene with her wanting chapter and verse – this time when I told her it was something to do with work and I had no choice, she barely grunted and carried on fussing about having nothing to wear for her next date with _Sebastian_ -" she interrupted herself with a gigantic yawn, and snuggled down as Angel tucked her close to him and began stroking her hair.

When he was sure that Nina was deeply asleep, Angel rolled away slightly, staring sightlessly out at the panoramic cityscape offered by his penthouse window. While part of him didn't want Nina to leave - their relationship was so new and fragile, his rational side had pointed out he wanted Nina to be safe, and that her being on the other side of the planet qualified by far as the most effective way to accomplish that.

What was more, he hadn't had to lift a finger to cajole, persuade, coerce or deceive her into going. Learning to control the wolf was, he knew, the most important thing in her life right now, even more important than him – which was exactly as it should be. Whether their fledgling romance survived or not, not least because _he_ was unlikely to survive much longer the rate things were going, Gillian and Amanda Bayliss would still be around - probably along with Sebastian and Lauren Argyle now too - still needing protection from ending up as a wolf's midnight snack, and Nina was right to prioritise them.

Ironic, that his first true love should provide the ideal means for him to get his current girlfriend well clear of this war zone without appearing to do so, but then probably Buffy had been a lot more clued into the undercurrents around here during the takedown of Rutherford Sirk than she let on; just like him, she was a Champion and she'd been a Champion before _he _got promoted to the job too – in their world _work experience _actually meant something.

Doubtless Xander Harris had _also_ clued her on some things. Once he had bothered to look past the trademark 'aw-shucks' Harris goofiness he remembered from Sunnydale, he had been amazed by the perception, shrewdness and discerning personality of Xander Harris. In the words of Spike, Xander's '_always present but never there_' persona enabled him to see and hear everything, the boy thus growing into a man who didn't miss a thing.

What was that old song? _There's a bad moon rising_…Oh yes, indeed. He sighed and closed his eyes, unconsciously quoting aloud the shrewd opinion of one of his favourite musicians, Jim Morrison, of The Doors: "_This is the ballroom of the Titanic, friends, and no-one gets out of here alive…_"

Continued in Chapter 2…

© 2008 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers


	3. Chapter 3

_**Disclaimer, Summary, Rating,**__**Setting**_please see Part I, Chapter 1.

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 1**

**Chapter 3**

"Am I _boring _you?"

He snapped back into it as Gwen desisted trailing her fingers lightly and pleasurably around his nipple and asked the question in a sugary sweet tone. Having a lover who could literally deep-fry you in about a second flat made a dude _very_ alert to the _nuances_. He sighed deeply, "Sorry, babe…I guess…"

Gwen smiled and moved closer. "What's wrong with Angel now?"

"Angel?" he parried instinctively.

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, like anyone _else_ could put that look of constipated angst on your face. Spill it."

"'Constipated angst'?" He echoed indignantly but he moved; putting one arm behind his head and resting on it he glared at the canopy of the four poster bed while with the other arm he pulled Gwen close, enjoying the soft pressure of her breasts against his chest and the way she rubbed her legs against his. "It's…I don't know what it is. I just can't shake the feeling Angel's got us all in some sort of _holding pattern_ for some reason…"

"You think he's turned into Angelus?" Gwen asked in surprise.

"If he were Angelus, we'd all be dead." he denied with chilling simplicity. "No…"

"If you don't thinking Angel's beginning to turn evil then –?"

"It's worse than that. I think he's beginning…to not _care_." Gunn admitted. "Like Abe Lincoln said, just because someone is evil, doesn't mean they're not telling the truth. Look at the world around us and Lindsey McDonald's claim that we're in the middle of _the_ Apocalypse – definite article, capital 'A', accept no substitutes - sounds more and more plausible. He also said we're not heroes, because every day we sit in our fancy offices signing cheques and learning to accept the way the world _is_, but heroes don't accept the way the world is. Heroes live as if the world is the way it _should _be. Heroes fight to _change_ the world into what it should be…"

"And Angel's stopped doing that?"

"Honestly babe, I wish to hell I knew…The only thing I know is that I don't know what on earth is going on inside his undead head these days…" He growled in frustration. "I mean, Angel could always take Olympic Gold in Brooding, but lately…When we first came to W and H, Spike told Wesley that Angel no longer believed in the _Shanshu_, that what we did no longer had any meaning to Angel…and it's true, Angel's been –"

"Disconnected, everyone keeps saying so," Gwen interposed.

"Yeah…During the first months we were here, I didn't get that. I mean, making that move gave us so _much_ but half the time Angel acted as if coming here was something he did at a terrible cost to himself…"

"Maybe it was." Gwen pointed out. "I may not know much about other dimensions, or realities or whatever they are, but I know the fun cut-throat world of big business and the industrial-military complex. Maybe Angel came here because he was promised something he couldn't turn down."

"Like what?"

"Like…that…I don't know…Or…how about…that Cordelia Chase would be awoken _and _restored to him – which she was - for all of about six hours."

And, with typical inconvenience, his omniscient legalese kicked in with the relevant info, "Meaning Angel would have had no legal recourse with the SPs because they'd fulfilled their end of the bargain in bringing her back."

"Exactly – no offence, Gunny-Bear, but like I said: extensive experience of the cut-throat world of big business and the industrial-military complex right here – and I'm talking _pan-dimensional experience_ of deals that would make your hair straighten in fright. That's the nasty thing about lawyers – they're past masters at fulfilling their obligations to the _letter _while simultaneously screwing you over in the _spirit_. If whatever contract Angel signed with who – or _what_ever - only specified that Cordelia _would_ return, but not for _how long_ then they could legitimately raise their hands and say, 'Hey, we delivered', even if Cordelia Chase only got to do an encore for six minutes – or six seconds."

"Damn, I never thought of that…" belatedly he remembered the whole Darla fiasco – which Lindsey McDonald had been up to his shyster eyes in too.

Because sure Angel had made the deals that got Darla resurrected and re-humanized…Except that as part of the natural order she had then gone right back to what she was doing when the Master had Sired her – which was dying from final-stage Syphilis, and even in the 21st Century, end-stage Syphilis was terminal, giving Darla about four painful weeks to live before she died, again, as a human from the disease saw her on her deathbed in 1609…

"And Gunny-Bear: just, no." he vetoed firmly.

"I'm not saying that a deal about Cordelia Chase is _it_, but that is a possibility." Gwen hesitated slightly, "Um, have you talked to anyone else about the vibes you're picking up? Lorne? Wesley? I mean, the Brit's got a brain the size of a planet, got to be more in there than book dust."

He chuckled but then sighed again. "Nope and I'm not likely to either. Lorne…he can read people's futures when they sing…he knew Fred was going to die from the get go and he knew there was nothing anyone could do about it. And…"

"There's some History there too," her tone sought confirmation rather than outright question. "Just the way they are around each other…just a feeling."

He grinned at her perception and made a mental note to be very, very good when it came to dissembling around Gwen Raiden, 'cause razors had nothing on his gal. "Yeah…nothing romantic, although he's had plenty o' hot chocolate to go with his green…and whipped cream…and…golden syrup – _ow!_" he hissed as a nipple was painfully tweaked between a thumb and forefinger, ending his recitation of euphemisms for women of various ethnicities – hot chocolate for African, West Indian and Caribbean blacks, whipped cream for Caucasians, golden syrup for Asian, Oriental and Arabians.

"Getting the picture, move it along, cowboy."

There wasn't a lot of mock in Gwen's growl, and a dude knew when to listen to his lady. "Back in the day Lorne got suddenly sucked into a portal from Pylea to here. He landed in a derelict warehouse that he built Caritas on. He loved it – there's no music in Pylea, no poetry –"

"'Just beefcake and beef_head_ wannabe warlord heroes-in-inverted-commas roaming around with swords and psychopathy,'" Gwen quoted clearly from memory. "That guy, Gru – told me about it one time when I met him downtown."

"Yeah well Lorne's many things but not stupid, and therefore since he didn't open the portal, he knew something else must have done it, and therefore his salvation must have been an accidental by product of the intended design."

"But he metaphorically grew an ostrich head because he didn't want to know what or who was suffering or dead as a result of his lucky break?" she sighed, "Denial – the largest state in the union."

"Pretty much. The thing was that the 'who' was none other than Fred. She was sucked into Pylea and spent _her _five year stretch there as a slave stroke escaped fugitive. But she never held anything against him - of all of us she and Lorne are – were - the closest, friendship wise. In some ways I think that makes him feel worse – living up to what it means to have someone that good…that decent and generous of spirit…decide to like you and trust you and befriend you…probably did more to cripple him with guilt than rage – no matter how righteous or justified."

"So when he knew there was no way to stop Illyria killing Fred…" Gwen swallowed a lump in her throat, feeling an ache for the green-skinned guy – she still carried around the guilt of electrocuting a boy who'd only been trying to show kindness and friendship, even though she hadn't meant any harm.

Gunn sighed heavily and sadly. "Don't get me wrong, he always comes through when we need him, but he's spent the last few weeks viewing the world through the haze of an endless succession of Sea Breezes. Lorne fled Pylea to _escape_ from packs of macho-but-dumb heroes swaggering around the countryside with big swords and hokum heroic quests."

"You mean like Gru? His buddy, Dennis, who was with him, said Gru was Pylean like Lorne too. I have to admit…I like the guy but he's a bit…full-on for extended exposure…I expect him to talk like someone out of a Mediaeval romance half the time – y'know like_ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court _kinda deal? All that Knights of the Round Table stuff: 'have at ye, varlet', 'forsooth', 'cry havoc and war', 'prithee Gentles all, we must at once to horse!' and 'once more unto the breach' and all that."

"Yeah and yeah – and oh yeah. Let me put it this way – what Gru said to you wasn't exaggeration. In Pylea guys like Gru don't just come in a handy six-pack of '_half-a-dozen handily awesome heroes for your mayhem and chaos convenience_', they come in six-packs with a permanent buy-one-get-one-free offer. Imagine living in a world where Groosalugs – which means Invincible Champion in Pylean by the way - are literally a dime a dozen."

"Iy-yih-iy." She shivered theatrically.

"Lorne got caught up in being part of Angel Investigations mostly by accident, and truth be told and I'm beginning to think that it's actually damaged him more than the rest of us put together…"

Gwen cuddled closer at the tone of distress in Gunn's voice, recognising that her lover was only understanding these traits in those around him just now that he was thinking aloud, verbalising the nebulous worries plaguing him.

"As for Wes'…he and Angel aren't that close these days. Angel doesn't approve of Wesley's relationship with Fred-stroke-Illyria."

"Well, would _you_?" Gwen pointed out rather tartly.

"No…but not because of the sex thing…" Gunn struggled to verbalise what he meant to convey. "I think it's more because whenever Angel looks at Fred, he sees his _failure_. He failed to save Cordelia from Jasmine – well he didn't but we all know how he does guilt - but it wasn't as intense, even though he halfway to falling in love with her, because she was out of sight – Cordy was all neat and tidy in a hospital bed…"

She nodded understanding, the action rubbing her hair against Gunn's chest; she'd never let on but shortly after she'd first encountered Team Angel, she'd gone to the hospital, disguised as a nurse, and slipped into Cordelia Chase's long-stay intensive care unit room…She hadn't even been sure herself what she could have done, but it was known that sometimes a powerful electrical shock could stimulate brain activity, and even cause comatose patients to become more conscious. But there had been nothing there – she had had no sense of a personality, even an unconscious one, within – just mechanical bio-functions supported by modern technology. She tuned back in as Gunn, after a brief hesitation, carried on his tentative explanation of Angel's distress:

"…but Fred…the thing that murdered our friend stalks the halls daily in full sapphire glory like a rampaging super-Smurf. Whenever Fred emerges…she's never blamed Angel or any of us for failing to save her, even me, the wilfully self-deluded idiot who signed Illyria's damned coffin through Customs, but I can see it eating away at Angel." He bit his lip. "Fred is Wesley's world – always will be. For him, it really is that simple."

"Spike?" Gwen said the name tentatively.

He snorted and shook his head in disbelief. "There's another one whose mind is a mystery. That's the thing about Spike – you think you've got him all figured out in about in the first five minutes, then something comes along and you realise he's still a complete stranger to you." Gunn explained, "Spike's the one picking up the slack now that Wesley's more oriented on Illyria than the _Shanshu_. He's taken over Wesley's sidekick role, and Lorne's job, and Cordelia's…he's like a vampiric Mrs Doubtfire."

Gwen giggled. "Now there's an image!"

"Yeah…but seriously…When Spike first re-materialised I didn't look past his habit of downing Jack Daniels at every opportunity or the nice line in sarcastically winding up Angel. I shoved him into a pigeonhole marked 'macho but dim' then stood there and watched as he unconsciously let slip in a million ways that he's got more depth than the Grand Canyon." He scowled at his own previous folly. "I talked to him and he was surprisingly lacking in sarcastic putdowns, but he admitted he'd never seen Angel like this. He can read Angel's brooding cycle like an open book, but he told me Angel isn't brooding, he's…withdrawn, closed in on himself."

"So what do _you_ think is going on?" Gwen enquired.

"Something _very _nasty. You could have knocked me down with a feather when Angel let the Fell Brethren take that baby…Marcus Hamilton stood behind me smirking like the cat that got the cream and Angel just walked away…but later on the quiet he came back and said, _'I'm working on the baby thing, just hang in there a while longer…'_ I don't know what's going on but I'm certain I'm not going to like it when I find out, and the fact that Angel _isn't _confiding in Wesley or Spike – the two people he's most likely to go straight to – is worrying me even more."

"How can you be sure that he'd tell Spike or Wesley what was going down before you?" Gwen was rather piqued at this perceived slight to her lover.

"You know Spike's Angel's grandson?"

"Uh yeah, not sure I still get that entirely but…"

"It's how mystical scholars describe a vampiric lineage," He clarified. "A vampire kills someone when it feeds on them – drains their blood. Sometimes a vampire will not kill a victim but will force the person to drink some of its own blood; the demon-DNA saturated blood – magically evil, in layman's terms - infects the victim, causing monstrous damage and enabling the demonic parasite to take over – the soul flees and the body becomes host to a demon. When a vampire turns a human into a vampire, he is called the 'Sire' of that vampire, or she, since they're still called the Sire even if they're a vampiress."

"Got it…" Gwen nodded, "So a 'Grandsire' is the Sire of the vampire that Sired Spike."

"Exactly," Gunn smiled. "Actually, in the mystical world, Angel's is an illustrious lineage, kinda how folks in Europe have Kings and Dukes and stuff."

Gwen raised an eyebrow, "_Illustrious? _Come on, props to the Brooding One for working so hard at the redemption gig, but I'm new to all this mystical lore stuff and even I know that Angel is a front-runner for title of the greatest mass murderer in history – if the Gypsies hadn't banged in that soul in 1898 goodness knows what he would have done in the 20th Century with modern military technology and the examples of Pol Pot, Che Guevara, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Papa Doc, Idi Amin and any of a dozen other tin-pot tyrants to try and outshine."

Unable to refute this truth, he instead explained, "Who your Sire is or was can give you tremendous _cachet _with the fanged fraternity. An infamous vampire for over eight hundred years was The Master –"

"Modest guy, obviously."

He chuckled, "– Who I _think_ was Sired by a badass dude who called himself The Prince of Lies, probably where he got his egomania from. The Master pretty much rocked in the vamp world; anyway he was too old to be able to pass for human here in the U.S. of A. even by the mid-1500s, when the Pilgrim Fathers were just setting up shop here. He Sired a prostitute dying of Syphilis in North America, who was our own homicidal Darla. That girlfriend took evil to new heights in her own right for a couple of centuries until she went to Ireland and in 1753 and came across a lecherous drunken buffoon by the name of Liam Connor and Sired him as Angelus, who of course was The Master's grandson. They roamed the world as a deadly duo for a hundred years or so, then Angelus came across a girl with psychic powers whose name was Drusilla Warwick. He drove Drusilla insane and then Sired her. In 1880, she Sired Spike, ergo, Angel's grandson."

"And I thought my family was the pits." Gwen muttered.

"My point is that Angel and Spike have got History with a capital 'H', complete with gold ribbons and silver bells. Ninety percent of the time, each can read the other's mind long before he gets round to saying anything. That's why I'm so worried that _Spike_ doesn't know what's going on in Angel's head."

"Ditto Wesley?" Gwen asked.

"Yeah. I remember when we were gonna have the Dark Mystic of the Kung Sun Die extract Angel's soul so we could get what Angelus knew about the Beast. Wes' said that 'I've been preparing my whole life for this moment, and I'm still not ready.' Even though I'd heard all the stories, I still never really grasped what Angelus was, until we brought him back."

"Wes' was the only one who could cope with him?" Gwen couldn't prevent a hint of scepticism leaking into her tone as she mentally compared her buff street-warrior with what was, in the nicest possible way, a mystic über-nerd.

"Bi'lee dat," Gunn's abrupt use of LA street-slang for 'believe that' showed the depth of his conviction. "Wes has studied Angelus inside out, most of the Watchers had - that's how bad he was. In fact, Wes has worked side-by-side with Angel for five years, practically Angel's personal Watcher, longer even than Angel was part of Buffy Summers' Scooby Gang, so basically Wes _is_ the ultimate expert on both of 'em - Angel and Angelus..."

"So it's the same with Wesley as Spike? It's worrying when _he_ doesn't know what's going on with Angel either." Gwen realised.

"…and more worrying that Wes is too involved with Illyria to _care_," he pointed out grimly. "Look, Gwen, do me a favour, I know you can take care of yourself, but this trip to Japan - stay there and make it a proper vacation, will ya?"

She looked at him solemnly. "You're really worried about this, aren't you?"

"Something's coming," he _knew _it absolutely, "and it's going to be very, very bad."

Continued in Chapter 4…

© 2008 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers


	4. Chapter 4

_**Disclaimer, Summary, Rating,**__**Setting**_please see Part I, Chapter 1.

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 1**

**Chapter 4**

"Illyria?" He spoke softly, but couldn't prevent his concern infusing his tone.

Since the death of Rutherford Sirk, Illyria had been present almost constantly. Fred had emerged only for brief periods and even then had proven uncommunicatively monosyllabic, seeming almost _happy_ to retreat within Illyria. He could not get either woman or demon to open up and explain what the problem was.

"I am tired, I wish to sleep." Illyria's tone was dismissive.

Prudently, he erred on the side of caution and made no demure as Illyria closed its eyes and half-turned over away from him in the bed.

He remained on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Illyria/Fred's usually vigorous libido seemed to have gone into hibernation along with its/her deterioration in temperament, but even without recent events playing a part, he wasn't altogether sorry.

When Fred was there, they made love _together_. When Illyria was present, it mated with him. The mechanics were identical, but an unbridgeable chasm yawned between the respective executions. Although, to be honest he hadn't been at all surprised by that turn of events; it seemed the inability to adjust to what you were rather than what you had been wasn't limited to humans. The frustrated 95-year-old turned sour and acid-tongued because their brain was still only 25 years old, and was still capable of parking with a boy or undoing a girl's bra-strap blindfold, but their body was long past it's sell by date. Or the ten-million-year-old God-King of the Primordium whose brain still ruled half the known universe but whose body could no longer warp time or walk through the fabric of reality like going from the bedroom to the bathroom.

He had been secretly surprised, and somewhat relieved, when Illyria's ability to communicate with plants returned – he would have loved the opportunity to get a handle on that, had he not long ago figured out his future would be _limited_ to say the least and therefore he needed to prioritise his time in a way incomprehensible to everyone else. But it didn't need even half of Fred's IQ to realise that Illyria was thinking along the lines that if one ability had come back – although not quite at broadband speeds (at least not yet) – then some of her _other_ whammy that he had been forced to draw off to save her (and the continent) would also return. Even without some of her super-powers, Illyria was still incredibly powerful and retained superhuman strength; God-King-lite she might be, but it was notable that Marcus Hamilton was still avoiding the Blue Meanie.

And a corollary to the situation was that coming from Illyria, sex was intensely erotic but extremely dangerous – and somehow terrifying, in an exhilarating kind of way – it must be similar to what extreme sports addicts felt when they base-jumped or free-ran or whatever the current thrill-seeking fad was. Roger and Trish Burkle's surprise layover en route to their Hawaiian vacation had been a case of cosmically bad timing, barely days after he'd 'defused' Illyria. But three seconds into pretending to be Fred, Illyria had realised it still wielded the most potent weapon – Fred Burkle, bless her genius IQ – had managed to survive within, and so Team Angel would do anything to protect what _they_ perceived as the 'shell' – Illyria.

Sometimes he would have liked to have known how Illyria had processed the concept that to the 'muck that ate itself', _Illyria_ was the vessel and_ Fred_ the precious contents. He frequently shuddered at the potential consequences he dreamed of. But then, Illyria wasn't _evil_, not in the way the Wolf, Ram and Hart were evil. It had rampaged like a hurricane, but with just as little malice, whereas they were like Hitler and his carefully and callously considered Final Solution.

Illyria had genuinely expected the 'human plague' to be gone within a million years, not still be thriving after ten, and had expected its vessel to be some tentacled demon warlord behemoth, not the smartest girl in the world. But it was also in Illyria's nature to dominate; what had it said to Angel? – _'Serve no master but your ambition_'…To conquer was innate and opportunities to do so were seized without malice or delight merely neutral acceptance of rightful due. Illyria was dependent on him to be her interface, her _Qua'hah'san_, in this world, and therefore her/its need to dominate him was primal and profound. Thanks to the unwitting Roger and Trish Burkle, Illyria now knew exactly how to do that.

But right now, in the still of the night, it was time to embrace the guilt and acknowledge that he had taken his eye off the ball with Angel well and truly. The original copy of the _Scroll of Niamh_ occupied his every spare minute that wasn't taken up with riding herd on Illyria, and Angel had been shunted into the background. It was a novel take on the classic 'obedient kid' syndrome, where the quiet child was left to fend and the screaming brat hellion got all the attention – after all, he and Nigel had played those respective roles throughout their childhood. Nigel had had only to sniff loudly for Mother and Father to be worrying about influenza; he could have been hospitalised with pneumonia for a week before they noticed he wasn't at breakfast.

Unfortunately he was hyper-aware of the acutely invidious position that Niamh had put him in. Reading the undamaged original had not been a happy experience. He looked at Illyria's back; he knew everything now, but to steal some comedy guy's line, 'If ignorance is bliss, knowledge is pure hell.'

These days he felt like he was in one of those situations where a healthy person was more likely to die of a stress-induced heart-attack than their more physically-ill spouse, child, etc. Going about his daily life without Angel or anyone else becoming any the wiser that they were on the cusp of momentous, catastrophic events required a legerdemain that was exhausting.

Plus, Angel was more alert now, after everything that had happened with Connor. That 'oblivious' too-busy-with-everything-else-going-on attitude that had caused Angel to not notice his weeks of torment and withdrawal before Angel's tame Watcher made the decision to kidnap Connor had been brutally vanquished when Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, nice, safe, loyal, nerdy Wes, had brained Lorne and run off with Angel's baby son.

When Illyria first emerged, Angel had plainly told him, _'I don't like where this is going,'_ but the simple fact was that B.C. - Before Connor - Angel wouldn't have even noticed, or rather, it wouldn't have even rated a mention as the vampire with a soul braced for the next annual apocalypse soonish.

He smiled to himself wryly. If anyone had told him that _Spike_, no less, would be a godsend, he'd have ruptured something laughing but his guilt rather tartly pointed out how the blond vampire had taken up his slack and then some. His smile quickly faded. Angel had been dropping hints that something big was coming, something that he intended to fight; the thorn circle or some such. Something that would shake their world like a snow globe, presumably the same 'pernicious bloom' that Niamh waxed lyrical about; even with the entire undamaged original to study and compare with other works, it seemed as if the prophetess had taken a perverse delight in being cryptically coy at the most vital junctures of the document.

At this point in time, however, his priority needed to be to buy himself some time – for meditating on the _Scroll of Niamh_'s contents and what they meant, in fact for a bit basic breathing space. It would also be very prudent at this point to provide Illyria with some distraction, no matter how trivially or briefly. He'd deliberately not focussed on Illyria's regained ability to talk to vegetation, which might have led Illyria to fondly believe he hadn't noticed. What he _had _definitely noticed, whilst Illyria thought him to be asleep was the way it had stood, stock still, near the potted ferns it was nurturing, and manifested _tentacles_…on at least the three occasions he'd witnessed.

Oh the first time they'd lasted barely a half-second, but the next couple of times he'd seen, it had managed to prod a fern pot with one tentacle tip before the limb dematerialised or whatever, strongly suggesting Illyria had been practising unseen by him. The image of Illyria in the source book was indelibly seared into his mind – its original body had been much larger and naturally tentacled – not moist and damp like an amphibian, but dry and supple like a snake. In the image, several tentacles had held a weapon and even without, each tentacle would have been a formidable weapon in its own right – sinuously flexible, crushingly powerful and, no doubt, capable of regeneration if cut off, like the Hydra, which was nowhere near as mythical as people imagined.

He had examined the image with a magnifying glass and made some allowance for artistic licence, since although thousands of years old the original book had nonetheless been written millions of years _after_ Illyria and its brethren 'Old Ones' had been trapped in eternal-sleep-yet-not, a sort of mystical suspended animation, in the Deeper Well. However, he saw no reason not to believe what the detail depicted under the magnifier - a couple of the tentacles had had pincer claws; others were bifurcated tips - split in two, Illyria's version of opposable thumbs and fingers.

It would never have needed a jar opener and would always have been able to hold all its' cutlery at least.

The moment of levity passed and he stared at the stiff back presented to him, that rear torso of wine-dark armour. He couldn't blame Illyria for seeking to regain what it could of its stronger/faster/tougher original form, and from its perspective why not – it had been able to produce the protective chitin-like 'armour' almost from the get-go and then despite him sucking off a lot of its residual energy it suddenly got back the ability to talk to plants without even trying.

'_I want my handy multi-functional tentacles back'_ was the logical next step. From Illyria's perspective, it was Robin Williams as the genie in Disney's _Aladdin: _ultimate cosmic power; itty-bitty living space. If it could manifest more of its original body in this dimension for even a reasonable amount of time then it wouldn't be sardine-canned into Fred like one of Cindy's wicked stepsisters trying to shoehorn her clodhopper into the dainty glass slipper.

But now was _not_ a good time for Illyria to be experimenting, not with everyone else so twitchy about Angel handing off that baby to the Fell Brethren like it was a supermarket BOGOF offer, not with Marcus Hamilton oiling around the works like Blofield's pet cat after it had gorged on cream, and certainly not with Angel's state of mind being so…neurotic, basically.

So far, Angel didn't seem to have noticed about the plants, although the Hyperion's rapidly zesty penthouse roof-garden on this wing was a big clue – a big clue he had partially obscured by asking _Gru_ to undertake a growing-greenery project on _his_ wing's rooftop garden so 'I can let Illyria look after some of those plants too'. Gru, cheerfully taking Wesley's request at face value apparently had a quite a green-thumb himself if the luxuriant rooftop foliage was any sign – Gru's own rooftop was a veritable jungle.

Most importantly, If Angel did notice the renewed foliage and still made the connection he was now less likely to get twitchy over the fact that Illyria could once again chat to his side salad. But if something nasty and homicidal attacked them, and Illyria manifested tentacles it was able to _use_ physically in this dimension to swat the nasty, just like 'Phantom' Dennis could now manifest himself visually and interact physically with this dimension thanks to Willow and Fred – although Dennis hadn't revealed for how much time at one go – then, as Cordy might have said had she still been…around…Angel was likely to pull some 'dumb-ass knee-jerk stunt' in overreaction.

Given Angel's track record in the _'panic and kill now, engage brain and actually think way later'_ stakes, it was likely the _only_ thing left alive at the end of that scenario would be Illyria – just like the first merry go-round, with those time-jumps when Illyria had wiped out all of them, before detonating in a supernova that destroyed the world by exploding a third of the Earth into space dust.

Spike's pithy summation of _'she's cracked her engine bloc and leaking oil all over the place'_ had been spot on. Afterwards, he'd run the simulations several times to make sure of what _would_ have happened if he _hadn't_ been able to persuade Illyria to let him drain off some of its energy. If Marcus Hamilton had claimed night followed day, he'd have stayed up to see what happened at sundown, but after running those simulations, he believed the Senior Partners' pet without hesitation when Hamilton had claimed that they had wanted Illyria back about as much as any sane person wanted to contract Ebola or the Marburg virus.

He could only think of one way to, possibly, flick the 'nose' of that imperturbable self-possession with his 'finger'…this was either going to be the most horrific or ecstatic experience of his life – possibly both at the same time. But still, he was the Champions' _Mahju_, it was his jobs to get the vampires with souls to the Ball on time. What they did when they got there wouldn't be his problem, if _Niamh_ was to be believed.

Ignoring the small voice that was shrieking and gibbering '_are you insane? Are you __**insaaaaanne**__?'_ in the back of his hindbrain, he thought for a moment, then faced Illyria's back and slipped his hand around to caress one leather/armoured breast. For a moment he thought Illyria was truly 'asleep' but then it stiffened.

"Fred is asleep." Illyria rebuffed, though it did not move.

"Good." He placed his other hand on her uppermost buttock and squeezed lightly.

"I also want to sleep."

_Liar, liar pants on fire_. "_I_ want to mate. Don't worry, you can just lie back and think of the good old days carousing with your sidewalk grit – sorry, Armies of Do -"

Talking when an annoyed hell-god had its hand squeezing your throat was a tad problematic. Illyria's cobalt eyes seemed to glitter with an inner – but paradoxically icy – fire, as it tilted its head as if deciding whether to crush his throat or just asphyxiate him.

"You _dare_ attempt sexual congress with me anyway when I have refused," there was definite threat there.

"Why, worried you might spurt a tentacle or two while we're making out?" he taunted – or at least as much as he could taunt with a restricted airflow.

But her grip twitched and relaxed a fraction – _ah thank you, sweet, sweet air_.

"I can only manifest tiny fragments of my original form, nothing of substance."

"For now, maybe so…But you are improving with practice." _Okay for the smooth, now for the snide_. "You thought I hadn't seen you practising your _Octopussy_ impression for that sleazy Sramacinorev demon that's been lurking over the road?"

"You fear I wish to regain my tentacles to sexually congress with that creature?" Illyria asked with obvious and actually rather pleasing incredulity.

"Oh come on, like you didn't notice it was all, _ooh look at my giant pincers aren't they shiny_…overgrown Lobster Thermidor." He muttered deliberately.

He waited as Illyria remained so still it could have been deep frozen clearly struggling to assimilate this concept. Once it was explained to Illyria that the building's mystery Luaric poisoner remained elusive and was still spiking what he/she/it fondly imagined to be Angel's daily mug with the mystic depressant, Illyria had made no demur about Spike and Angel feeding off his blood – feeding from _him _– but Illyria had also clearly taken on board Fred's condition about 'not the blonde strumpet'. The notion that its' _Qah'hah'sahn _might also have some terms and conditions in that department had clearly never entered its thinking for a second.

"The Sramacinorev were as the ooze in my day, there is no being…what you would call demon…in a million worlds in this dimension that is worthy of my original form in its stupendousness and glory," Illyria retorted indignantly.

_Ah, that's my God-King of the Primordium, utterly unable to grasp modesty if I spent a thousand years explaining it with pictures… just the right hint of jealous scepticism now…_"Really?"

The hand tightened again; Illyria did not lie and did not like what it said being questioned; it did not _need_ to lie, when it was a force that bent worlds to its will and remoulded reality as it preferred. "You are _human_…to you tentacles are not considered…"

_Ah yes_: power and ego of a minor deity, insecurities of small-town, flat-chested, nerdy not nubile (or so she thought) Fred.

"I clearly need to intro you to LA's tentacle porn industry." The words slipped out before he could censor them, unsurprising due to his current tense situation, so he hastily went on, "Fred knows that I used to be a rogue demon hunter before I agreed to join Angel Investigations."

_Thank you thank you thank you_ that Fred, having just been rescued from Pylea and still mostly PTSD-bonkers at that point in time, had always taken his '_can't talk about my rogue demon hunter days, classified you see_' comments at face value and assumed his Englishness equalled some sort of Watcher type 007 James Bond status. Lorne and Gunn had also been oblivious as he was already part of the furniture when they got co-opted as semi-regulars in Angel's lunatic adventures; only Angel and Cordy had experienced his bumbling 'application to join' and were aware of the pitiful, pathetic reality of his 'rogue-demon hunter' period.

"I am aware of this." Illyria confirmed, the way it did not hesitate with its answer showing that Fred the human was still asleep with its cortex.

Probably with Illyria making sure she _stayed_ that way; this was classic Illyria on a mission to acquire information/knowledge/ power/advantage – Pit-bull after a juicy bone didn't come into it.

"Well during that period of time I…had a brief interlude…with a very…voluptuous and energetic woman who turned out to be an Eh'Pik demoness."

"I am familiar; mature females of their species produce two tentacles from a pouch in the base of the spine and two from pouches below the shoulder blades. Their preferred glamour as humans is as red-headed women with large breasts and buttocks. You _consorted_ with this female?"

_Oh yes, definitely an edge to that question. _"Ah…It was…a very brief encounter, I admit…but the tentacles were actually a key feature in the…um…situation, although admittedly initially somewhat disconcerting."

If it were possible her eyes went from ice-silver to pure ice-white as she seemed to be trying to see into his brain. With every effort of muscle control he had he stared back with as much of a _'me? Honest as the day is long, I am, guv'nor'_ look as he could manage; after all, everything he'd just said was the absolute truth.

And a complete lie…

_Oh he had the bike and the weaponry and the disturbingly appealing leather gear now, and he actually did quite well when he wasn't tripping over his own feet, losing his spectacles or trying to talk to any female beyond the age of puberty without his tongue quadrupling in size and his facial muscles each taking on a random rubbed-in-itching-powder life of their own without any co-ordination with any other facial muscle. _

_But the only person who wasn't fooled by the visual was the bloke who looked back at him from the mirror of a morning. Humiliating as it was, he needed to earn enough cash – without getting himself killed by a __**real**__ demon-nasty – to pay his own fare back to Britain. Although, he could probably scandalise his family altogether and set up shop as an independent mercenary sorcerer for hire, like Ethan Rayne, who even today had still evaded even the Slayer and was last rumoured to be living it up on a constant round the world cruise, getting generous paydays out of wealthy matrons for a few exciting parlour tricks._

_Still, this job seemed straightforward. The human landlord who'd hired him was clearly clued-up about the reality of the world as he had described the target - a Nirwd-Bal that was encroaching on one of his housing projects – in the proper technical terms. About the size of a Springer Spaniel and with a segmented body like an Earthworm, a Nir' could burrow just under the surface of the ground like a turbo-charged mole courtesy of two flipper feet at its back end. It had a big circular mouth of sharp teeth and its preferred food was household pets and if it got the chance, babies of whatever species happened to be around. It was also extremely aggressive and would take the opportunity to eat a chunk out of anything it thought it could._

_And for once the situation had been easy – a doughty old Texas lady babysitting her infant grandson had grumpily brained it in the kitchen with a skillet – several times – just as he'd pulled up on his bike. He'd only had to take his helmet off. She'd even helped him get the 'critter' in the containment sack and loaded onto the pillion. _

_Unfortunately halfway to the city incinerator easy had fled the scene when the Nir' woke up with a vengeance…he tumbled off his bike and ended up in a violent grapple-fest to keep the thing in its sack. Trouble was a Nirwd-Bal was like one of those thick foam balls you gave to little kids as 'starters' when you were teaching them catch. No matter how much you squeezed bits of it bulged out elsewhere and because it had no rigid bones only muscle it could contort itself into knots – and did – trying to escape from the sack to savage him._

_Back and forth until – riiiiiiiiiip – he ducked as the Nir came hurtling out of the sack headfirst and jaws snapping, lunging at its back end and grabbing tightly those small propelling flippers, only to realise that –_

_KER-Ash! Straight through a flimsy wooden wall into some sort of bedroom – boudoir even – with the crashing of glass and bellows and screams and the screeching of the Nir'…_

Oh yes, it had indeed been a brief encounter as they'd ended up in some brothel bedroom with him entangled in the remains of the window and curtains. The customer – obviously some biker-gang guy, mercifully still fully clothed in denim and metal studded leather – was the upper side of gigantic, completely bald with ears the size of satellite dishes and several gleaming – and possibly solid – gold teeth in place of nature's calcium originals.

Biker dude had been distinctly unimpressed at a giant worm thing crashing through the window into his gargantuan torso and then trying to take a bite out of him. The hooker however, had commanded the day: a magnificent vision of pulchritude, clad in nothing but a blood-orange lace scrap at her groin and a blood-orange silk and lace bra strained to the last hook-eye by keeping in that vast expanse of creamy white bosom. He had only had a second to automatically a) note that her underwear exactly matched the colour of her wild mane of red hair and b) her incidental resemblance to the great oil painting of grandmother Lady Apollonia at Uncle Bill's stately home, before she jumped straight up off the bed and with a coyote-howl of pure fury revealed her Eh'Pik nature by grabbing the flailing Nir' around its middle segment with one of her spine-base tentacles and battering it up-down-left-right-side-to-side around the room in a rage, like that scene from _Men in Black_ where the new-born squid-baby waved 'J' around like a baby-rattle.

He'd taken down the biker for his own safety – well okay, accidentally caused Gigantor to trip _over_ him as the shocked guy ducked to avoid being clobbered full-on by the unwillingly low-flying Nir'…

_The biker swivelled that hairless bullet-head towards him, clearly believing he'd been tripped on purpose. _

_Oh dear – get rid of him, quick, Wesley. "Quick, run! Get to the door! The Eh'Pik is clearly in season!"_

"_She's got tentacles!" the biker barked back, the guy's eyes huge in his head and clearly not having heard much if anything of what Wesley had just said._

_Ah obviously not aware of the realities of the world. "Yes, I know. This dimension is packed to the rafters with half- and part-human species and those that use 'glamours' to pass as human, to look as if they are human, like this one was using!"_

"_Glamour? She's got __**tentacles**__!"_

"_I meant 'glamour' as in the short magical spell used to cast a visual illusion so one thing is made to look like another, not 'glamour' in the sense of a beautiful human woman dressed in an evening gown with expensive jewels!" _

"_Whaaat?!" _

_Alright, he could understand the man's shock as everything he thought he knew was reordered and rearranged – to the accompaniment of shrieks from the Eh'Pik and screeching from the Nirwd-Bal, but he really didn't have time for this – the landlord had offered a bonus of five grand if the Nir' was toast by dawn and that was money he'd couldn't pass up if he wanted to afford a flight to Heathrow anytime this decade. Otherwise his options were Ethan Rayne-style independent contractor or go Dark Side in the ignoble tradition of the Sorcerers Magellan – rogues, scoundrels and adventurers of bad repute…not that they'd done too badly out of a bit of being rogues, scoundrels... Focus, Wesley, focus._

_One last bit of explanation then he'd have to leave the man to flounder and sort it out on his own. Timing his shouts of explanation in the brief gaps when she or the Nir paused for breath, he managed to disjointedly convey: "She's a demoness of the Eh'Pik species. Their adult females have four tentacles, two at the base of the spine and under the shoulder-blades and they get a bit excitable when they're in heat. Probably why she sneaked in here pretending to be a prostitute – the real hooker you paid for is probably – ah, yes, there."_

_The wildly thrashing Nir' trying to escape her tentacle grip demolished a large floor to ceiling two-door closet which collapsed outwards like some old farce-comedy movie to reveal a skimpily clad human redheaded woman bundled into the bottom in a ball. Fully-clothed, heavily made up, and not nearly as well-endowed as the Eh'Pik impostor, she caused a moment of farce in her own right when she gave a loud snore and didn't so much as twitch at the din around her. _

_The Eh'Pik were not a particularly violent species, just emotionally volatile, and Eh'Pik like most demon species had no interest or use for human paper money (it would have been different if humans still used minerals, metals and jewels as currency, admittedly). The real hooker would have woken up in the course of tomorrow to find a good stack of money on the dresser without having any memory of anything but feeling very tired and just closing her eyes for a moment…_

"_You're crazy!"_

"_Does this __**look **__like a figment of my imagination? Don't be ridiculous! Be a man not a munchkin!" _

_Okay, not a good thing to say to a frightened – and furious because he's frightened – Hell's Angel guy who out-highs you by a foot and a half and outweighs you by your own bodyweight and a generous extra helping of pudding and custard. A huge hand closed on his biker jacket front and hauled him up close and personal to those big gold teeth. Divert and distract, now Wesley!_

"_She's in season, hence her extreme outrage at being denied copulation! We'll have to -"_

_The shovel hand let him go and the biker yelled over the din, "Way she's yo-yoing that worm thing no way those tentacles feel pain, right? So if I grab and squeeze she'll let go without being hurt?"_

"_Yes – but no! The worm thing is a Nir' – it feeds on babies and pets – we can't let it escape!"_

_They ducked again as the enraged Eh'Pik brought the still-contorting Nir' round for another whack against the walls, which were kicking out dust as if also in danger of collapse._

"_So she-all's just horny but the worm thing's homicidal?" the biker demanded._

"_Um, yes, essentially," He blinked at such succinct summation._

"_Right!"_

He hadn't had the chance to move – amazingly for such bulk, the biker guy had popped up like a Jack-in-the-box and dived not up at the waving tentacles but forward onto the bed and taken the female's legs out from under her and they'd collapsed in a heap on the bed which promptly did collapse as the legs broke. Dazed from the battering the Nir had momentarily lain there stunned and he himself grabbed the bedcovers and dived on top of it, rolling and thrashing and – thank you thank you _finally_ – managing to swaddle the dratted thing tightly in the bedding so it couldn't so much as wriggle and –

_There was a deep grunt behind him and he turned – and gaped. The biker had, somehow, used the Eh'Pik's own tentacles to entangle her and truss her up like a Christmas turkey, the lack of pain receptors meaning the kinks in the way he'd wrapped them around so as to pin her arms and legs caused her no pain. The deep grunt came as the biker, with a huge grin, hoisted her Junoesque frame over one shoulder so she dangled headfirst down his back, her hair falling around her head, with her scarlet-lace thong exposing both bare cheeks of her ample arse. _

_She snarled in fury and tried to twist as he wrapped his arms around her pinned legs against his chest, furiously trying butt at his lower back with her forehead but her voluptuous breasts bounced against his back like a cushion when she tried. _

"_Get….stupid…human…stupid…male…shred you like confetti… stupid… male… male…stupid."_

"_Heh-heh… I've been called worse." Cheerfully the biker started to walk through the debris of the demolished room._

"_What are you doing? __**She's **__not dangerous."_

"_I know, you said that – but this gal, boy, she's a keeper - she's horny, hot and in heat, and…come on, how often do you get the chance for tentacles."_

"_That's a positive?" he repeated in disbelief and even the Eh'Pik stopped twisting at that._

"_It be for me – ah-all breed snakes for carnies and science research – even those Evangelical pastor dudes who do their preachin' while wavin' a rattlesnake at the congregation. I love all that sin-u-huss grace – and I love a woman with plenty of meat for a man to get hold of!"He slapped her bare bottom with a big hand and stomped off through the brothel like some white-trash 'Officer and a Gentleman' knock-off…_

"The tentacles were a positive," he told Illyria, which was the truth – just not about himself; momentarily he wondered what had happened to the biker and his, quite literally, booty prize and hoped they had found some small happiness in this world.

"They aren't a problem for me." Lie, but he would put up with pretty much anything Illyria decided to try for Fred.

And Illyria blinked, the drill-through-your brain ice-stare retreating. It moved its hand from his throat and caressed his chest lightly. "Then, we shall experiment."

"Right…" _oh dear lord…_

Continued in Chapter 5…

© 2008 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers


	5. Chapter 5

_**Disclaimer, Summary, Rating,**__**Setting**_please see Part I, Chapter 1.

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 1**

**Chapter 5**

Spike shifted his weight into a battle-ready stance, cursing that leftover streak of romantic chivalry neither he nor his demon seemed able to eradicate from his own psyche. Unless he was misreading the signs – and he hadn't misread the signs since that debacle with Dru, the dwarves, the strippers and the Awldwth demoness in that speakeasy back in…1924? 1927? Whatever, whenever - this whole situation was about to go to hell in a hand-basket.

He was an exceptional fighter, and like all old warriors, he hadn't gotten to be _old_ without developing the ability to read volatile situations like an open book and discern a good ten minutes before anyone else whether things would calm down - or explode.

It was highly likely that in the next few minutes, he would be dead or wishing he were. The Akb were growling and swaying, their eyes glowing with lust. Unfortunately, that was the problem - they weren't after_ blood_, just lust, and it was looking like Spike wasn't going to be able to convince them that he wasn't that kind of night-stalking, blood-sucking undead boy.

Despite the gravity of the situation, he grinned wolfishly. For all his unvampiric emotional depth, there was nothing like vicious hand to hand, or hand to tentacle, combat to really make you feel good.

There was movement behind him, a Guo and Apahtak, but strangely they ignored him and each other, despite millennia of vicious enmity. He shot a glance at Uyila, the cause of the problem, but she was beyond his reach mentally if not physically. The Uyiii was too far gone; oblivious to everything and everyone around her.

He still found time to plan his sarcastic speech which would blame Angel for the situation he was currently in. It was no fun if he couldn't wind up his grandsire.

Since taking up squatting at the Hyperion, he had spent most of his Friday nights at _Ye Olde Britannia_, the ex-Pat English pub behind _The Peppermint Stick _strip-joint, something he hoped Wesley would not discover. But the ex-pats bar gave him a nostalgic feeling of home. Its outdated decor, music and food recalled happier times.

Apart from the occasional microbrew beer, Wesley was rarely around the Britannia or anywhere else these days. He could understand Wesley's position even as Angel couldn't. Wesley was Illyria's interface to the world in the same way that he himself had been Drusilla's.

He'd loved his psychotically insane Sire. Part of him always would. He certainly didn't hate her or want her dead. Just like a bit of him still loved Cecily Underwood, and like part of him would always love Buffy Summers; it was just the way it was.

Because of this understanding, he had known it was up to him and simply stepped into the breach as Angel's number two, but recently he had found himself isolated, and not for once, by deliberate attempts to ostracise him, as the Scooby Gang had tried on several occasions. Wes had Illyria/Fred, Gunn had Gwen; even Angel had Nina – at least for now, 'cause that wouldn't last. At least not if Nina Ash grew any kind of spine enough to realise she deserved someone's full attention, not whatever scraps the Champion could spare her once in a polka-dot purple moon between last year's Armageddon and this year's Apocalypse summer blockbuster. Not to mention the main feature that git Lindsey McDonald insisted was already playing to packed audiences.

Nor was the Hyperion the haven of solitude it had once been. Thanks to the Vessel of Troas network Willow and Fred had sorted out, Gru – they would have to come up with a proper name for that bloke – had moved into the back half of the far East Wing, along with his sidekick/babysitter, the ghost of Dennis Pearson, who thanks to the said Vessel wasn't so much Phantom now as 'materially-challenged American'.

It had been quite cheering, really, to see Denny boy's sheer, uncomplicated delight in being able to become first 'visual', and now actually 'touch' and 'move' objects – he couldn't _actually _eat or drink as the stuff would spill all over the place, nor did he need to use a restroom; but he could fake it by _holding_ cutlery or a mug/glass, and appear to 'wash his hands' etc., so when he was out with Gru or indeed anyone else he could flawlessly fake the minutiae of being alive. Like Dennis said, when you'd spent seven decades bricked up behind a fireplace by your own mother, it's the little things that meant the most.

Now Dennis, he could have coped with, but Gru's antics, particularly in terms of amorous females, were just too annoying, especially as it was, to be honest, impossible to get _angry_ with cheerful, naïve, clueless Gru. A small mercy was that even with vampire hearing, both the East and West wings and the long back wing were pushing it to hear the gory details. Angel had let slip that the last time the Slayer horde had descended, Xander, bless him, had presciently done some repairs to the least-Earthquake damaged East Wing using _sound-proofing _wall fillers, which Angel was continuing to use throughout the rest of the hotel at a rate of knots during his downtime. Apparently after taking money-management advice from that David Nabbitt guy, Angel was able to spring for wholesale cork floor and wall insulation, plus more esoteric soundproofing solutions, which muffled sound nicely and lasted well.

And on top of the 'Gruesome' resident and his spectral sidekick, Wes had now moved the Blue Meanie into the West of the two rooftop garden penthouses in the front Central Wing which was essentially split into two halves by the glass rotunda roof atop the main entrance lobby in the middle of it so had an East Penthouse Suite and a West one. He understood why Wes had done so given the momentary glimpse he'd had of the fully charged Illyria during that time-jump day as Wes had drained off enough of her energy so as not to blow out a big chunk of the planet.

Wesley had understandably wanted a more 'controlled living environment' on the grounds her ability to talk to salad had come back, whatever that might mean for the future. For some reason Wes hadn't mentioned the 'back to being able to converse with carnations and talk to tulips' bit to Angel, who of course to be different didn't live in the East Central Penthouse but in the same third floor suite of rooms he'd been living in during the 1950s - until the McCarthy witch-hunts when a hysterical mob had lynched him from the balcony overlooking the lobby. Sometimes he really, really _did_ wonder about his grandsire.

He had gone to Caritas a couple of times but it wasn't a happy experience. Lorne had begun to greatly increase the time he spent there, but the green demon was spending way too much time looking at the world through an endless succession of Sea Breezes. He had gotten aggressive about it and so he had backed off, but his poetic side easily enabled him to understand Lorne's bitterness, even though he'd never been to Pylea.

The dimension was like Arthurian Britain as visualised by Mark Twain - only without the good points. How had Wesley described it? _'Roaming packs of Conan the Barbarian types swaggering around the countryside solving every problem with a sword and bellowing epic sagas about buckets of blood and disembowelled entrails and barrels of foul ale.' _There was no music in Pylea. No art, no fiction, no _poetry_, even as bad as the 'effulgent' stuff he used to write, or William de Vere pre-Drusilla had written.

'_Lorne came to LA to escape that sort of mindless medieval heroic idiocy,'_ Wesley's voice echoed once more in his memory, though his fellow Englishman hadn't actually said 'yet he ended up as part of Team Angel' because he hadn't needed to. Lorne just wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with this sort of bloodfest, but then, who was?

Precious few, even amongst the Watchers and those who considered themselves great mages, really could cope with the mystical world in the long-term. It was a dark world, lonely, nasty, brutal and often capriciously vindictive. What had some Watcher – Henry Winchester or some such - once written in his journal, one of those Willow had digitised as an online e-book under the Slayer Chronicles section of the Scooby Gang's website: _Our world comes in many colours: each one is a different shade of black. This life ends bloody, or sad_.

He had seen that growing pain in Andrew Wells' eyes when the kid had come to collect Dana Parvati; even a few months as a trainee Watcher had already exposed him to too much. How much more so that applied to what so many considered the bit-part players, the extras; the peripherals!

Joyce Summers had been one of the most together people he had ever met; she was mother of the world's greatest Slayer, and accepted being mother of the Key without much trauma, but as he had made sure to spend time with her each day before she died – their little secret kept from all, including the Slayer – especially the Slayer - he'd found that entire avenues of conversation were effectively stopped dead. Obliquely, Joyce had admitted to him that emotionally, the only way she was able to cope with the reality of what her daughters were was to pretend that it_ wasn't _real. And yes, she got the cosmic irony of that, thank you. Quite often, and especially near the end when the brain tumour was affecting various regions of her brain function, Joyce acted as if Buffy and Dawn were characters in a story, or members of some LARP group party, rather than real-life heroines fighting for their lives.

The same applied to Robard Wood, Robin's long-absent father. Nobody had given _him _much thought, but then as a posthumous child to a father he'd never known, he had always been the one to wonder about the family member nobody else thought of. Dear old dad. Hank Summers, as Buffy had so aptly put it, was living the cliché in Spain with his new wife, having not bothered attending his first wife's funeral or managed more than a single stilted telephone conversation with his elder daughter. Cynically, he wondered how long it would be before Hank left wife number two for his next secretary, just as he had left Joyce for _her_.

That had sparked his curiosity to wonder about Robin Wood's paternal parent. It hadn't been that hard to find out, since the Watcher Diaries could never be accused of being skimpy on detail. Nikki Wood's Watcher had been vociferously opposed to her marriage, even though Robard Wood came from a cadet branch of a fine old West African Watcher family with ancestors who had been Watcher-Scholars to the Mali Empire Imperial family back when the Mali Empire had colonised all of Central America. Robard Wood's ancestors had lived in what was now the continental United States since the mid twelfth century, fortuitously for them always in what became in the Nineteenth century a Northern non-slave territory. But at the time of Robard and Nikki's burgeoning romance, the 'smart money' (not so as it turned out) was on any new Slayer being called in Europe or Asia, not America.

Robard and Nicolette Wood, and their son Robin: the perfect all African-American family. But Robard hadn't been able to cut it. He'd grown increasingly resentful of the fact that Nikki's Slayer role blatantly meant so much more to her than her husband and yes, even, their son. He'd left to live in Chicago when Robin was a year old. Nikki's Watcher hadn't informed him of her death, and by the time he found out, Robin was nearly ten. At the time, Robard had remarried with a new family who knew nothing of his former life, since he had cut himself off completely from his Watcher ties – Robard Wood had made his choice...

Uyila's human veneer was now completely gone, her naturally purple scaly skin glowing bright indigo. Even for him, standing a good twenty feet away and thus – just – out of range, it was impossible not to feel the tugging of the pheromones pouring off her, like the way dry ice 'poured' over the edge off a stage at a gig or in a movie. Everything within the twenty-feet radius was completely helpless in the thrall of the Uyii's emanations and stood around her with glazed eyes and slack jaws; the Guo and Apahtak who in any other circumstances would have tried to tear each other limb from limb about ten seconds after encountering each other now stood side by side, moving closer to the Uyii.

He tried his best to retreat backwards without actually appearing to move at all, no mean feat, acutely aware that the situation was about to explode in a meleé of sex and violence; _lots_ of sex – and lots of violence. Then the back door of _The Peppermint Stick_, the sleazy strip joint that shared the back alley with _Ye Olde Britannia,_ bounced open as two huge purple creatures wearing the tattered remnants of human business suits emerged and began to stalk directly towards Uyila with a strange side to side swaying motion like Robbie the Robot in _Lost In Space_.

With an inner grasp of relief, he calculated – in five, four, three, two, one – now! Doing a back flip from a standing start is extremely difficult even for a vampire, but he managed it, landing just inside the back door of _Ye Olde Britannica_ and backing away until he was well clear of Uyila's emanations. Fortunately the ex-pats bar, showing they weren't entirely clueless, had magical protective wards that would contain the mayhem to the alley, much like a force field in _Star Trek_ contained an explosion within it. 

Everyone in the bar ignored him, but the chatter was louder than usual as everyone desperately and rigorously also ignored what was going on in the alley; however, when he got back to his bar-stool, he found his whisky glass had been topped up.

The bartender nodded at him as he sat back down, "On the house for the rest of the night; you've saved us a fortune in…ah…redecorating…" he winced at a particularly loud shriek from the alley.

_Nice one mate, I think I will. _He shrugged. "Never could resist the waterworks, I suppose."

He savoured his whisky and resolutely ignored the shenanigans going on in the alley. It was true; he had never been able to resist a woman in distress – or who appeared to be a) a woman and b) in distress. As soon as the young woman and man had entered _Ye Olde Britannia_, he had instantly sussed them as disguised ODIS – Other-Dimension Indigenous Sentients; that being the official 'PC' terminology. The universally used but often inaccurate 'demon' being a catch-all phrase to describe any creature not indigenous to_ this_ dimension. For all Lorne's bright green skin and horns, Pyleans were _not_ actually a demon species _per se_ for instance; the bright green skin and red eyes were biological functions of living on a world with _two_ suns and the small but far from vestigial horns factored into the Pyleans anagogic abilities.

Unfortunately, he had also instantly sussed the male as being a jerk-wad. The prick had arrogantly harangued the girl for ten minutes then stalked off with two buxom gigglers leaving her sat alone at a table biting her lip and blinking furiously to ward off tears. So what had he done? He had gone over to her table and talked for ten minutes getting her to give him a watery smile, and discreetly escorted her to the back door so she could make a surreptitious exit home and avoid having to pass her increasingly drunk and leering now ex-boyfriend in order to get to the door.

That had been the plan, anyway. Her drunken ex had followed them into the alley and uttered a few more insults before swatting Spike into the wall hard enough to crush his skull – or at least that had been _his_ plan. Ducking under the blow, it was Spiky had been the one doing the swatting. Unfortunately the upset had set the girl – Uyila – off on another crying jag and it was only as he felt his impatience and irritation being swamped by an overwhelming but completely unwilling feeling of _desire_ at the sight of her red, blotchy, puffy face that he realised what species she was – Uyii.

At that point, he'd been able to do nothing but scramble as far away from her as he could as she lost control of the 'human illusion' glamour. That had been only the beginning, and some who had come to watch the fun hadn't been able to get clear of the zone of her pheromone emanations in time.

Few humans realised just how much of myth and legend, of fairytale and folklore, was based on history – the real history of the universe that was all too often dismissed as fairytales and myths. Just like the Maenads were really Etric demons, so too Bacchus/Pan had really been a _female_ Uyii losing control near some Satyr 'demons'. The whole faun/satyrs-and-nymphs Bacchanalias were often descriptions of Uyii mating rituals where other species had been caught by the empathic energy. As one mystical scholar who survived such an orgy had bitterly put it, _'If you're lucky, you'll survive, if you're really lucky, you won't'._

Uyii females had two genital orifices, one on each side of her body where a human's hip joints would be. Uyii mated for life, but in trios. Two males simultaneously mated with one female and the three nested together from then on – if one died, the other two also did. The problem was that the Uyii's native home world was like the African Congo or the Amazon cloud-forests on steroids - completely covered in extremely dense 'forests' comprised of 'tree-like' plants of incredible toughness that were impervious to fire or felling. Instead of forging through miles of impenetrable foliage hoping to stumble across compatible mates, the Uyii females when they came into season simply emanated immensely strong waves of pheromones. On their home planet, which existed in this dimension down another spiral arm of the Milky Way, (practically on the same street in galactic terms) these pheromones carried many hundreds of miles across the atmosphere where the males' olfactory ability could detect a single molecule in a billion; on this world, mercifully, the range rarely went beyond twenty feet.

However, Uyii females were notoriously biologically unstable. When mature, a female could remain in a 'dormant' state for many years, or suddenly come into heat without any warning, especially those younger newly adult females. High stress situations – such as being publicly humiliated and then dumped by your idiot of a boyfriend in a strange dimension far from home – were almost guaranteed to trigger the mating cycle in a distressed and youthful Uyii female.

He risked a glance at the alley through the pub's rear door, his vampiric sight easily piercing the near pitch-black gloom; nope, still going on…though he derived no small satisfaction from the way one of the big Uyii males sent Ex-Boyfriend reeling with a savage slash to his torso. The ex collapsed whimpering on the ground, caught up in the lust but helpless to intervene, as he was no match for the males – amongst Uyii males, size mattered, and those two were the far side of massive heading for mountainous.

Quite a few of the more well-known hybrid clans, definitely including the Biyanarah demon clan _and _the Samph clan and possibly including others such as Brachen species to which the late Francis Doyle had belonged, had initially gotten started way back in the day with genetically compatible species accidentally getting caught up in in a Uyii backlash – Gnomes, for example, had originally been the result of Pygmy Orcs and Dwarves being Uyii 'discombobulated', as were the Samph, the result of Satyr demons which were mostly male births, and Nymph sprites, which were mostly female births. The Satyr demons, afterwards deciding that the experience had been well worth it, had continued the tradition of Nymph Harrying ever since, although the sprites were very dangerous – wood sprites lured their pursuers to carnivorous trees, quicksand or hidden swamps, whilst water sprites quadrupled their strength in water and could drown a full grown Satyr male in a moment if she could get to even a small bathtub of water, or 'persuade' a snow bank to avalanche down.

Other examples were when one or some humans and one or some extra-dimensional species were caught up in the fray, such as humans and Biyanarah, although Biyanarah demons were amongst the most intelligent, calm and amiable species around – but again, extremely dangerous when provoked – as the old saying went, _'The most dangerous Biyanarah spikes are the ones you can't see.'_

Unfortunately, thinking of spikes and spines, et cetera, there were also many susceptible species, including vampires, which also got caught up in the Uyii emanations who were _not_ necessarily anatomically compatible; things with spikes, spines and other nastiness that resulted in severe injury and death to other demon species and humans. Anything trapped in the range of the Uyii emanations and overwhelmed by the battering, deluging pheromones would mindlessly copulate with the closest living thing in the vicinity, regardless of gender (or lack thereof), species, size differential or anatomical compatibility – or incompatibility.

"I thought vampires were affected..?" The barman allowed his words to trail off as he topped up the glass again, deliberately not drawing attention to the vampires in the alley…

"I know the difference between love and lust." he shrugged, not willing to go into a detailed explanation – or admit that more luck than judgement was at play. "When you've known the former, the latter will never have any power over you again."

Wisely, the barman left it at that and moved on to other customers. He shut his ears to the sounds and concentrated on the real crisis – Angel. He knew Angel better than his most well-thumbed volume of Keats, but this time his grandsire had moved into new territory. This wasn't brooding this was…the only way he could describe it was a mixture of _resignation_ and _resolution_.

Even Xander could have successfully laid him out cold after he witnessed Angel give that baby voluntarily to the Fell Brethren; he had been paralysed between a conflicting desire to smash in Marcus Hamilton's smirking face but also go after Angel and give him a good pasting. He hadn't been all that mollified when Angel had deigned to mutter in passing, "I'm working on it" followed by some comment about black roses with thorns, but he knew that he would let Angel take it down to the wire if need be; he always had.

Besides, there was no-one _else_ to have a frank discussion on the subject with, here or back in Sunny Hell. Lorne was drifting further and further from Team Angel every day, not that he could fault the green guy…If there was anyone _less_ suited to a day-in-day-out existence of macho heroism than Lorne…but the green guy had stepped up to the plate. Pulled into Angel's orbit as he had been, Lorne had stayed the course no matter the personal cost, and deserved medals for endurance and commitment at the very least.

Gunn was now Mr Guilt but with Added Attitude, determined to thwart the Senior Partners in any small way he could. He was too focussed on making it up to Wes and…Fred…and maintaining his burgeoning relationship with Gwen Raidan; if necessary, Gunn could survive _without_ Angel, just as he had survived without his parents, then his grandmother, and even his sister, Alannah.

Wesley was…a non-starter. While not as full-on crazy as he had been in the immediate aftermath of Fred's death, he still wasn't playing with a full deck again. But then who could be with Illyria in the picture? As for Fred, she would have tried to help but you couldn't guarantee that Illyria wouldn't decide to take over and possibly take some pre-emptive action that would exacerbate the situation a hundred-fold. And back in Sunnydale the Scooby Gang were dealing with far too many of their own too-similar problems to take on board the Angelic angst.

Which left him: Spike, alias William the Bloody Exhausted! Running around pulling other people's arses out of the fire and then trying to put said fire out as best he could. Just like always. No wonder his inner demon had been so accepting of going up in flames to save the world – after two centuries of being nanny/cheerleader/babysitter/ nurse to his mother, to Cecily, to Drusilla, to Angelus, to the Scooby Gang and the Summers sisters, it had been thoroughly fed up with being Florence Nightingdemon. _I burned alive to save the bloody planet, and what's my payoff – stuck right back in my old job, this time nursemaiding Team Angel…_

Downing his drink, he slid off the bar stool; he could feel a brawl brewing in the air, doubtless the effects of what was going on in the alley and he wasn't in the mood either for a fight, or for the necessity of controlling his strength for the sake of the humans in such a situation. He considered the problems of making his way through the sardine can to the main doors versus running the gauntlet of the alley…Vampire sight he had, yes, X-ray vision through brick walls, no. He would have to risk a peek out the back door, but the solid brick walls should protect him from any emanations.

He peered through the window – yep, there was Idiot Boy, huddled against the wall, half-bent, there was Uyila and her two beaus, now forming one huge blob, and he deliberately didn't look at the few other shapes moving nearby in the very deep shadows, so he might -

He winced as several human prostitutes of both sexes and a group from _The Peppermint Stick_ boiled out of the back door of the place yet again smack into the middle of the disaster zone, those in front unable to stop due to the momentum of those behind. One of the strip-joint's bouncers, obviously immediately realising the situation, grabbed the shirt of his colleague, yanked him back inside and frantically slammed the door on those who had already exited as there was simply nothing he could do.

Within seconds they were engulfed in a resurgent thrashing mêlée of mayhem; one man was killed instantly when something with a spiny arm (?) like a medieval battle mace smashed into him and crushed his ribcage, causing the rest of them to shriek and scatter and further add to the confusion. One of the female human prostitutes had her arm grabbed by a ten-foot tall male Ossith who used her own momentum to pivot her round so she faced it and then sent her stumbling back over some other thrashing tangle on the floor to collide with the brick wall of _Ye Olde Britannia_.

The Uyii emanations had sent that human female prostitute into a frenzy alright – one of rage. She disappeared from view as the much bigger Ossith lunged in, shrieking imprecations and kicking madly at it, but the Ossith's back was covered in a chitin-like carapace, unhappily similar to Illyria's bodily armour, that was impervious to pretty much everything up to and probably including thermonuclear detonation. Assuming nothing was able to dislodge the Ossith as it mated with her, she was actually most likely of the humans to survive as the much bigger male and its hard outer shell acted like a shield…Spike turned his head away as one of the other female prostitutes slipped and fell, and was crushed to death as a large flailing pair of…somethings…obliviously rolled over her. The first prostitute would also undoubtedly be pregnant; Ossith were the rabbits of other dimensional worlds; notoriously fertile and notoriously compatible with many other species, there were as many half-breed Ossith around as the full-blood species…

Once again he considered risking the crowded bar and going through the front, although after a couple of minutes the noise levels in the alley dipped as though things were settling down. The three Uyii remained locked together, the males wrapping their tentacles around and around like thick vines; their colour had faded to dull terracotta now to the extent that the brickwork camouflaged them. They would remain locked together for a good twelve hours yet but that dull colouring meant the emanations were now almost gone. Alley it was; if he couldn't outrun this bunch of ponces, he didn't deserve to make it.

Moving slowly with stumbling sluggishness as if heavily drugged, those victims/participants that still lived staggered about drunkenly, but there were several still shapes on the ground, and more who were maimed; he approached with caution, wondering if he could manage a mad dash to the street. He noted with satisfaction however that Ex was still down for the count. The immature male Uyii had been badly damaged by one of the full-grown males, and he smirked at the grunting creature as it huddled – it was doubtful it would ever find a male willing to take it on as a companion in a mating.

"Couldn't happen to a more deserving fella," he opined cheerfully, nodding approval as the survivors of the strip joint group made a successful dash down the alley for the street and carried on going as if all the hellhounds around were on their heels. If a bunch of poncy humans could do it…

The Guo and the Apahtak were still not sufficiently themselves to attack each other and instead lurched side by side out of the alley like a grotesque demonic Abbott & Costello. The Ossith finally came out of it and began to stumblingly lumber off in a dazed manner. Though reaching ten-feet in height, the Ossith lacked a lot of the spikes, spines and spindles that adorned other demonic species, it's most striking feature was the oval protective carapace that protruded from the back and went high enough to shield their head and reached down nearly to the back of their legs. Unfortunately combined with their polished-emerald coloured skin, chunky, thick limbs, their saucepan-round faces and double-lidded big circular eyes, the Ossith looked like nothing so much as giant sized Mutant Ninja Turtles; probably why they were so successful as a species - by the time enemy 'A' had stopped laughing at their comical appearance and jeering "'_Heroes in a half-shell!'"_ in a stupid falsetto voice, he/she/it looked down and realised that the Ossith had just dismembered/disembowelled them.

Clearly no stranger to finding herself in the middle of bad mystic mojo, the surviving human female prostitute pushed herself away from the wall, blew her fringe out of her eyes as she yanked down her micro-skirt with one hand, yanked up her black strapless 'wrap' thing over her boobs with the other and began to pick her way out of the danger zone, steering clear of the more dangerous species and obviously aware of which ones could still bite/sting/slash as an autonomic nervous system reflex even though still dead.

A hideously battered male vampire who'd had one arm completely torn off at the shoulder lunged forward but before he could do more than take a step she had grabbed a thin metal bar – oops, no a demonic severed limb – and walloped the other vamp as if trying to hit the ball clean out of Wrigley Field, sending it flying through the air and skittling everyone/thing in its path including a small Guo that was sent rolling into the path of – there was a sickening _crunch _as the lumbering Ossith squidged the Guo on the way down and it bellowed in disgust at the Guo goo.

He hung back and stayed safely in the doorway – clearly a woman with Issues. The assorted 'combatants' scrambled back to their feet and instantly a new melee broke out completely blocking the alley as the various admittedly traumatised survivors (so far) attacked each other. The punch-drunk vampire staggered upright and was 'dusted' by the male Ossith who just ripped its head off as he turned and bellowed wordlessly at the hooker.

There was a _second_ sickening crunch as she swung the limb full force into the Ossith's face. It bent in half like a boomerang but had no discernible effect other than to make the Ossith bellow anew in outrage and flail about – taking out another thing from a species Spike didn't recognise. He groaned at the renewed carnage – it was going to take him forever if he went back inside to go out the front door and the back was also completely blocked. Damn it – if only he'd seized the moment earlier. '_He who hesitates is lost_'was one thing, but this was ridiculous!

The hooker nimbly dodged left-right-right-left through the wild thrashing, jabbing assorted body parts with vindictive satisfaction en route, but the quick movements made the Ossith turn and the male recognised the source of his pain and disgusting goo and grabbed at her –

With a hiss Spike turned his face away in sympathy as this time she used her own momentum to her advantage, to spin around and deliver a stiletto-toed foot straight between the Ossith's legs with a meaty _thwack_ that reverberated through Spike's being.

With one giant hand the Ossith grabbed her around the throat and pinned her to the wall, roaring into her face. To Spike's astonishment she let out a blood curdling scream right back and slammed the Ossith round the face with the purse she'd somehow kept hold of throughout, causing it to let go. Okay, he was impressed but concerned – how long could the LAPD reasonably be expected to ignore a mini-riot this prolonged? Besides, it was only forty-five minutes to sunrise; he needed to be making tracks to the Hyperion _now,_ and it wasn't going to happen with the Anthill Mob blocking the alley way and shredding anything within range.

The lady of the night made another dash for it, drop-kicking a small biting demon with six arms savagely into the wall. The Ossith lunged again and grabbed her round the waist, heaving up and back and swinging her round as she shrieked imprecations. A vampire burst from the melee snarling only to get both her stiletto-shoed feet in his face as she kicked out wildly. At the same time the Ossith reached back and plucked a Chluth that had jumped onto its carapace and threw it like a bowling ball into the mayhem to the snapping of limbs and shrieks of pain.

Adjusting its grip the Ossith suddenly shoved her upwards and slung her over its carapace like a sack of potatoes, firmly pinning her legs in place, then it turned and instead of making for the street, lumbered back past his own position to the maze of back alleys. He saluted as the creature stomped past, giving a cheeky wave to the wriggling cursing screaming woman.

There was no need for heroic intervention. The Ossith had already impregnated her and had – quite rightly if that display of initiative, toughness and resourcefulness were standard operating procedure for her – decided she would make a suitable permanent mate. She would spend the rest of her life producing little semi-Ossiths courtesy of her sex-mad mate. Which wasn't all that bad a scenario; Ossith gestation just beat out Trolls for quickness – Ossith babies went from nothing to fully formed in six weeks and the newborn spawn were a third smaller than human babies and fully capable of looking after themselves from the age of about a week old. Strangely, in comparison to the life the poor woman would probably have experienced as a prostitute here in human LA, it was more than likely a better fate than she would otherwise have had.

He sighed and stepped out into the finally quiet alley – picking his way through the pools of blood and entrails and scattered bodily appendages. Here he was reduced to moping in a bar while everyone else was getting some, even Ossith demons and hookers, for pity's sake. Gunn would be hot and heavy with Gwen, Angel would be going all soul-filled over Nina and ignoring the fact that a) Nina's infatuation would diminish in direct proportion to her increasing self-esteem and b) as a Champion of Light he couldn't even let her be in his Top Five Priorities. Wes was with either Fred or Illyria or both, and even Lorne had a major flirtation going with Aggie Whatshername...Belljar? Belle flower? Nope, Bellfleur, that was it - his Bar Manager at _Caritas_. "When I said I wanted to be screwed, this was _not_ what I had in mind…" he grouched to the universe in general as he made his way to the Hyperion.

_Continued in Chapter 6…_

© 2008 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers


	6. Chapter 6

_**Disclaimer, Summary, Rating,**__**Setting**_please see Part I, Chapter 1.

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 1**

**Chapter 6**

With a screech like steam hissing from a boiling kettle, Harmony hurled her bedcovers up to the ceiling and bounced like Zebedee from the mattress. "That's it!"

Heedless of her frilly pink _Victoria's Secret_ baby doll nightdress, she shoved up the sill over her window, clambered out, and jumped, landing effortlessly four storeys down in the alley. Female solidarity be damned, she was going to eviscerate that tabby cat!

Kicking aside the trash Harmony prepared to lunge, only to blink when she found herself faced by a large, squirming holdall decorated with bright yellow sunflowers that was making the hideous wowing noise. Furiously yanking open the bag, she plucked up the culprit: a baby; a human baby, dressed in a pink dress and currently wailing her head off in outrage.

_Not for long_! Completely provoked by now, Harmony vamped out, her fangs bared, intent only on shutting the noise up. Startled by being so abruptly plucked into the cool night air from her prison, the baby unleashed her only weapon – with a soft _phrrt_ she voided her bowels into the diaper.

"Aaah! Ack! Oh! Ah! Ah!" Harmony wailed this time, reverting back to human form. The excretions of human babies can be particularly pungent and vampires had an acute olfactory sense. "Uuuugh!" She thrust the baby away to arms length and began to waft her about in a futile attempt to dissipate the stink.

The big person wasn't the baby's mother, but she was no longer dark and cramped and ignored, and so decided to find the swaying amusing rather than frightening. She pumped her arms and chortled encouragement to this new but fun game.

Trying to keep her breathing shallow, the human habit so ingrained that she forgot she didn't need to breathe at all, Harmony looked at the baby girl who grinned back at her; dark gold hair and big sherry-brown eyes, clearly of mixed race. Harmony plucked up the holdall. It contained a brown teddy bear, a bottle of warm milk, talcum powder, and baby wipes and a change of diapers and that was it. There was a faint lingering scent that was close enough to the baby's baseline to be her mother, the pheromone signature undoubtedly female.

Harmony looked at the night sky, then the baby; it would be dawn soon. "Okay…" coming to a decision, Harmony simply removed the baby's clothing and the soiled diaper, depositing it in the nearest trashcan. Grabbing the holdall with one hand she used the other to hold the baby at arm's length as she marched up the stairs to her apartment.

Dumping the holdall, Harmony filled the sink with lukewarm water and placed the naked baby in it, getting hold of the dishcloth she wrinkled her nose and dabbed distastefully at the baby's nether regions as she chortled again and splashed her hands in the water.

_Continued in Part 2, Chapter 1…_

© 2005 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers


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